Wireless Industry Association Opposes Bill That Would Require Warrant For Them To Turn Data Over To Law Enforcement

from the do-they-not-care-about-their-users? dept

You would think that it would be in the mobile operators' best interest to protect their own customers' privacy and to stand up for their basic rights. You would think, but apparently you'd be wrong. It appears that CTIA -- the mobile operators' industry association -- is opposing an effort in California to require mobile operators to require a warrant before disclosing personal info. The bill also requires some basic reporting requirements for the companies, having them say how often info has been disclosed (hardly onerous info to track). Basically, the law asks that the mobile operators respect the 4th Amendment when dealing with law enforcement -- something that the federal government has been successfully chipping away at for years.

But the CTIA is against all of this (pdf), claiming that it would be "confusing" for mobile operators.

... the wireless industry opposes SB 1434 as it could create greater confusion for wireless providers when responding to legitimate law enforcement requests

The crux of the "confusion" apparently is that the definitions in the bill are somewhat broader than what the industry says is standard, and they're afraid that this means "It could place providers in the position of
requiring warrants for all law enforcement requests." I'm struggling to see what the problem is here. What's wrong with requiring warrants?

The letter also fails to explain why the reporting requirements would be so "burdensome," other than the claim that providers already "are working day and night to assist law enforcement to ensure the public’s safety and to save
lives." So, if I read this right, they're arguing that they're already so busy responding to law enforcement that telling users that your personal data is being handed over to the government willy nilly is, you know, too much effort.

The ACLU is calling out the industry for this move -- noting that it seems to have no problem spending all these resources passing on all of our info -- why can't it spend a little defending its subscribers' rights too?

California is supposed to vote on this bill shortly. Hopefully, the state sees through these baseless claims from CTIA.

Reader Comments

More to the story...

It seems there's more to this story than at first viewing. CTIA and ALEC are very closely knit where ALEC passes legislation to politicians for passing. The mobile phone industry profits from less restrictions on user data. They can pass that data on to the government who pays through taxpayer money (think Intel-Q, who funds the NSA with venture capitol) for access. So effectively they are incentivized not to care about customers, but care about their bottom lines.

Of course, ALEC has been taking a lot of flak for the Stand Your Ground laws as well as even IRS proceedings from the fact that they have been lobbying Congress for over 40 years with legislation meant to benefit companies such as AT&T, Walmart, or CTIA regardless of what the public wants.

Sure, we can criticize CTIA here and put their feet to the fire. But with a company such as ALEC in the picture, I would look at who is being funded by these two groups to kill this legislation. It would not surprise me that you'll see money being given to oppose this legislation and give those funded talking points that closely align with CTIA's agenda here. And in the middle of it, ALEC would have set up the meeting between CTIA lobbyists and politicians to pass a bill to kill this legislation.

The reason is liability

The reason why the CTIA is fighting this law likely has zip to do with "confusion in the trenches", but more likely one of liability if they release such data without a warrant being presented, which is their current SOP. The police are likely to be against the bill for similar reasons, plus the burden on them of obtaining a warrant and then delivering it to the phone company in question.

Re:

911 is a different matter, and is already well-handled by the law. A warrant isn't needed to reveal this information because firstly, it's specifically allowed by law and secondly, the caller is voluntarily authorizing the disclosure of location information by the act of calling 911.

Reporting Requirements

I like this bill except for the reporting requirements part. Why should the carriers have to report when and what data they give to the police? I'd rather the police have to report when they request your data instead. It just seems so much easier. I'd rather the onus be on those requesting the data. Maybe they'd start to think twice about requesting more if the cost comes out of their budget.

I'm struggling to see what the problem is here. What's wrong with requiring warrants?

They probably don't want to put their employees in a position where the employee requires a warrant according to the law as he understands it, but the employee is incorrect that ends creating an obstruction charge.

Of course, you shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater, but that's probably the reason.

Re: More to the story...

That's a very good point about ALEC. They're behind most of the worst legislation working being pushed by Republican legislatures and governors nationwide. They see a small window of opportunity where they can get the bulk of their agenda through before states start throwing the bums out, as Wisconsin is trying to do right now.

These "Stand Your Ground and Kill a Black Guy" laws are just the most well-known of ALEC's ugly agenda. They're also behind the "Evolution is Just a Theory" changes to school curricula and "Global Warming isn't Real" school board changes. ALEC will even support extreme right-wing school board candidates, creating the first instances of SuperPAC involvement in local school board elections.

These are really, really bad guys. They do not have our best interests at heart. It's good news that the Trayvon Martin case brought them out into the sunlight and has gotten a lot of very big corporations to back out of supporting ALEC.

I hope its just a case of not wanting the paperwork in which case i support them. The police should be held more accountable for information requests so they only ask with reasonable case and if the information they receive doesn't tie up then they shouldn't ask for more without more physical evidence / additional concerns. If they do they should be penalised, named and shamed.

Re: Re: More to the story...

Although I agree with 99% of what you are saying, "Stand Your Ground and Kill a Black Guy" is total BS. The first kid killed in one of these situations(which was heavily publicized) was an unarmed Japanese kid looking for a party. The problem with these laws is that they PROHIBIT the police from doing a proper investigation.

Re: Re: More to the story...

There's two concerns I have here.

1) They've done a ton of damage with the SYG laws.

2) The work to undo their damage is far from over.

The SYG is already on the books in over 30 different states through heavy funding of Republicans to pass these laws. That's one of the myriad reasons why Scott Walker is so vilified in Wisconsin. He takes money from teachers in order to give to crony capitalism.

This does not change how the law has been very devastating against people who are victims to this bought legislation. ALEC's legislation disparages against human life with Voter ID laws (discriminate against the poor and middle class), extreme gun laws (Trayvon Martin) and even lobbying on corporate businesses (AT&T is their largest constituent along with Wal-Mart).

So the fact is, we need to expose CTIA and ALEC. They are going to act in their own interest and that works against the public good.

Its the same old "confusion"

There was a report on slashdot today that I was reading that talked about an ACLU inquest into the pricing structures that law enforcement agencies get from wireless carriers. Basically, the carriers are making money by releasing customer usage records, call logs, emails, texts, pictures, yadda yadda yadda, and they don't want this to stop. Quite a few law enforcement agencies are doing this carte blanche. I can't find the slashdot article at this time, but here is one from msnbc's tech group:

Response to: Jon B. on Apr 23rd, 2012 @ 2:55pm

Normally, stopping this kind of behaviour is the kind of thing I'm all in favour of, however in this circumstance I'm not so sure. A friend of mine works for the disclosures team in a UK mobile company. Her job is basically to take calls from law enforcement requesting information. She frequently gets what she calls "life and death" calls, things like missing children, people who have committed violent crimes against thier spouse and then legged it before the cops arrive - things that are time critical. On occasion, this can and has saved lives.

I don't think law enforcement should be requesting any old information they want, but where its life and death, a warrent shouldn't be required. The real question is how you judge this. I'm not sure what the right answer is.

the mobile operators are probably paid a fixed amount each year to just give subscribers info over. if warrants were needed, perhaps there would be records then of what went to which agency, about whom and when?

Re:

The right answer for that is have a special protocol where the issuing of the warrant is delayed, once the time constraint passes a judge most look over it and grant the warrant after the fact, where if he is afraid of putting his name on that warrant the police officers should be held responsible for what they did if it was improper, like claiming it was a case of life and death when they wanted to stalk their wifes trying to run away from them because of domestic abuse.

Re:

The way to judge it is to get a warrant. Does it take time, yes. Can bad things happen, yes. But the US is premised on the notion that it is better to error on the side of freedom. One of the most famous Benjamin Franklin Quotes is:

"He who gives up freedom for safety deserves neither."

So yes it sucks that bad things CAN happen, but if we allow our freedoms to be slowly chipped away, bad things WILL happen.

It goes both ways

As we have learned from the RIAA and MPAA, making a resource artificially scarce results in more piracy. Making the data harder for law enforcement to get to legally will encourage them to obtain the data illegally.

Re: Re:

That Ben Franklin quote gets trotted out every time, hell I've used it myself plenty of times, but what is it really saying? Taken litterally, it says that freedom is always more important than saftey. If that was true, there would be no cops on the street at all, and the gaols would be empty.

In reality I believe he was saying 'We can't have unlimited freedom, but lets not give up more than we reasonably need to'. Is this exchanging some freedom for some saftey? Yes. But its still more freedom than the current free for all system and a reasonable amount of saftey gained. It feels 'reasonable' to me.

As to chipping away at freedom, I couldn't agree more, I think its actually worse here in the UK than in the states. But we protect ourselves from this by being vigilant and making intelligent desisions based on the situation. A blanket 'No more restrictions on freedom' could be as harmful as a blanket 'the government can do what it wants'. After all, no new laws could ever be passed.

We live in a democracy, and like the system itself, freedom in a democracy is about balance, not extremes, whichever way they swing.

Re: Price Wars

I agree, I'm quite a bit more pessimistic about this situation. I would guess that handing over subscriber information is a nice revenue generator for telecos. If anyone shines a light on the practice it might dry up those profits.

Change?

It was a long time ago, but it used to be that any disclosure of customer information in California was done with a court order or search warrant signed by a judge, not simply a Supoena signed by a clerk. This should be required in all jurisdictions so that it makes it a bit harder for law enforcement to go on fishing trips.

Re: It goes both ways

Horrible analogy, but true. It is already fairly trivial to spoof a cell phone tower and log everything that passes through before sending it out on the network, not to mention the ability to use the phone's GPS to get location data remotely.

Hell, Sprint has a $5/month service where you can ping a phone and get it's GPS coordinates anytime it's on and connected to the network.

Re: Re: Price Wars

As I understand it, the friend I mentioned is employeed by the telco but paid by the government. I don't know if the telco gets a cut or not though. Like I say, this is the UK, so not directly relevent on what charges US telcos might levey.

As noted by Jay, Lobo Santo, and some AC's, the wireless industry opposes the requirement for a warrant because the requirement will result in fewer law enforcement requests for user data and therefore the wireless carriers would not be able to sell as much of it.
I'm not sure however that you need to include ALEC in the discussion to understand the wireless carriers' motivations. The fact that Verizon has contributed to ALEC doesn't necesarily mean that ALEC is behind this.

At the end of the day...

For the consumer it doesn't really matter because our personal information is going to be handed over via a paid transaction or warrant. Clearly the wireless industry would prefer it be a paid transaction.

Re: Re: Re:

The thing is in this day and age getting a warrant should not take that long. All you need is a system where there are several federal judges whose job is to issue these warrants. Cops can electronically file requests to these judges and they can be approved or denied within minutes, making the safety impact minimal at a fairly negligible cost when looking at government budgets. Therefore there should be no need to violate privacy in this situation.